Wanting a hard rain to fall? Why go to Baltic Pride.

It is the eve of the Baltic Pride march on Saturday, and the weather is lousy, periods of torrential rain, chilly temperatures. Among the hard-core haters of free speech and of those who are different, but especially those of different sexual orientation, even the weather is invoked on “their side”. It illustrates the almost primal, primitive hostility toward a  once every few years event to highlight the issues facing the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and “ shooby-doo whatever” - as I say when this phrase ties my tongue – community in Latvia.  The LGBTs (did I  get them all?). In many other countries, in civilized societies, this would cause little or no controversy. The kind of chorus of ignorant, blind, foaming at the the mouth in writing that dominates the internet news portals here is (unless I am wrong) unthinkable (at least on the scale experienced in Latvia) in normal, democratic societies.

OK, 20 years ago, maybe even 10 years ago, this could be written off as some after-effect of the decades long Soviet mindfuck of Latvian society, but there comes a time when you stop coddling the “victim” and realize that you are dealing with a society that should have reached post-independence adulthood and really needs nothing more than to be smashed “upside the head” to get its attention to what matters.

What matters is not to lash out with outrage at groups in society that, by scientific definition, cannot “recruit” other members of society to be like them, any more than the tall can “convert” the short. The nation's real problems are corruption, official stupidity (latest example - fuckwits in various educational bureaucracies screwed up the grading of ninth grade exams and the presentation of a final written English exam for the twelfth grade), unemployment and the emigration it creates. Solving these, some of which it may be too late to solve, will take effort and probably considerable financial resources.

On the other hand, creating a more open, tolerant, less hateful society costs almost nothing. Just stop! It takes no money to cease and desist hating those who are different by race, ethnicity, appearance, religion, sexual orientation or whatever. However, it appears that some kind of almost socio-genetic (where social and cultural factors pass on social traits and attitudes the way DNA passes on physical traits) is working to keep the much of population of Latvia (both ethnic Latvians and Russians) ignorant and hateful. Perhaps it is the educational system or the bleeding vent of emigration, where people simply give up for a complex, predominantly economic reasons, but also because of hopelessness with regard to any meaningful change in the future. Other, better organized, better run, more tolerant and democratic (but far from perfect) societies where the future has already arrived are attracting bright, young, open minded Latvians (as well as lowlife, to be sure).

Rain or shine, unless some unexpected duties arise, I will attend Gay Pride 2012 to show that I, as a straight libertarian person, am not, hopefully, part of the problem, that I stand for free speech and, derived from the principle of self-ownership, the right of people to consensually live and do as they please.  

Some good free speech developments, but keep off the grass!

Some good things seem to be happening in the free speech/free assembly area in Latvia. The Riga City Council has decided that the planned Baltic Pride 2012 march is not a threat to public order and should be permitted. So on Saturday, June 2, members of the LGBT community in Latvia, along with visitors from the other two Baltic countries and supporters from other countries in Europe, will be able to exercise their right to free speech and assembly. There will probably be a hateful, screaming crowd of counterdemonstrators – Latvia is probably one of the most homophobic countries in Europe, at least judging by the kinds of comments on internet portals.

Several diplomats will also take part in Baltic Pride, including the US Ambassador to Latvia Judy Garber and American ambassadors from the other Baltic States. Representatives of the Latvian government will take part in some pride-related events in the days ahead of the march.

It is important for “ straight” or mainstream people to take part in Baltic Pride to show that they, at least, are not part of the problem, not part of the anti-free speech, homophobic and possibly religious fanatic “majority against Baltic Pride” claimed by opponents of the march. For this reason, but mainly because I am a libertarian believer in free speech, I will attend Baltic Pride assuming nothing else gets in the way (I have driving commitments on weekends to resupply my mother-in-law at our summer house).

A slightly disconcerting incident I witnessed was the Riga Municipal Police asking people to leave the banks of the Riga Canal. It was done, I assume, with firm courtesy, but if the city is reneging on its commitment to open up the grass on Riga parks, then it should have explained why. The grass on the slopes, as far as I know, is not a different species than that in some other parks, where careful sitting or picnicking on the grass is not forbidden, or at least tolerated. One of the most absurdly SOVIET things about Riga was the ban on sitting on the grass in all public parks. The only thing the public could enjoy was walking on the sidewalks and sitting on the benches – compared to the openness of park grass areas in most civilized countries.

Defending free speech in a debate on banning Baltic Pride in Riga

The debating society of the University of Latvia has asked me to participate in a debate on whether the Baltic Pride March planned for Riga on June 2 should be banned. I, of course, will be taking the side of free speech and assembly with other debaters and will be opposed by Jānis Rožkalns, a former Soviet-era dissident and anti-pride activist of late, as well as Jānis Šmits, a member of the Riga City Council and a minister. Both believe that the Pride event should be banned  to protect children and the "moral climate" of the city.
The debate will take place at the University of Latvia "Mazā aula" lecture hall on Wednesday, May 23, at 16:30.
My view is that freedom of speech and assembly, no matter how "offensive" the purpose, cannot be forbidden. Censorship and the restriction of basic rights is a hallmark of authoritarian and totalitarian societies. Free speech is freedom for the speech we hate. My opponents, who evidently hate the idea of gay rights (they maintain that they don't hate gays per say) should be held to this standard. I certainly hold to this standard when, in this blog, I have defended the right of neo-Nazis to peacefully express their views.
I also will say that the issue is not one of Gay Pride in particular, since I would have exactly the same arguments for free speech and assembly if, instead of Rožkalns and Šmits, I was facing the opponents of allowing the Legionnaire's March (or the anti-Legionnaire protestors) on March 16 or those demanding tht the gathering to celebrate May 9 be banned. I also am against banning, to my mind, the crackpot celebration of the "liberation" of Riga by the Germany military on July 1, 1941, setting off a new round of repression against Latvia's citizens, in particular Jewish Latvians.
Living in an open, free democracy means living in the market of ideas, including ideas that you personally shun (so if you don't like gays or neo-Nazis or various crackpots holding the floor for a few hours, stay away. I personally am somewhat entertained by those whose views are radically different from mine and sometimes radically batshit).
Just for the record, I am straight, married, and have three sons and one grandson. So much for being a destroyer of family values or whatever crackpot accusations participating in this debate may bring down upon me. And yes, I am not homophobic, although being gay for me is second in being personally unimaginable to -- playing golf. It is just not me, neither batting a little ball around in a wide, well trimmed grassy field nor same-sex relationships. But that doesn't motivate me to start a no-golf movement or to declare golfers as a pestilence to society.  Hey-- don't ask, don't tell. And yes, you are free to flaunt your par, your score or whatever it is. This is a free country, let's keep it that way.

Who let the dogs out - a clarification

To update and clarify my earlier post on the concerns I have about using a repressive police agency against some bad journalism, it was not the National Alliance Saeima deputy Jānis Dombrava who complained to the Security Police about coverage of the events of March 16 in a television news spot on the Russian language First Baltic Channel (PBK). Dombrava actually complained to the National Electronic Media Council (NEPLP, the Latvian abbreviation), which, in a sense, is the right place to go. It seems that the NEPLP then submitted the case to the Security Police - the agency that arrests economics lecturers for commenting on banks, the currency and the economy.
Dombrava explained his actions on Twitter but said he was pleased that the Security Police had taken the case. I find that worrisome, but I have set the facts straight as to how this case ended up in the hands of Latvia's neo-KGB lite. Sorry about the inaccuracy, Jānis.
Which brings me to the next point - should the NEPLP (or NEMC in English) be forging this kind of relationship with a repressive agency that has arrested and charged people for exercising free speech (which was clearly the case with the economist Dmitrijs Smirnovs in 2008)? The NEMC has its own means of censuring and administratively punishing the media. The Security Police should be kept as far as possible from any involvement in the content of electronic or other media. If anything, the case in question, where some anti-Semitic shouting on the soundtrack of a news spot was attributed or imputed, in the Russian translation, to the wrong person, merits this kind of censure or administrative action, at worst. There may also be a civil case by the man who was arguing (politely, with no anti-Semitic wording) with two representatives of the Anti-Fascist movement who were trying to restore the wreath they had laid (see the earlier post), since it was implied that he shouted "Jews do not belong here".  Not true, although someone did shout that and it would have been part of a story that, while the man, apparently representing the organizers of the Latvian Legion commemoration, was having a tense discussion with the Anti-Fascists, someone did shout something against Jews.
As for the NEMC, please use your own tools for settling matters with media distortions and inaccuracies. To use the Security Police is so post-Soviet. 

Nationalists turn dangerous dogs on bad journalism

Latvia’s National Alliance (NA), which I have always suspected to be discreetly (and sometimes not so) teetering on the edge between democracy and (crypto)authoritarianism, has called out the worst of the dogs in Latvia on what I will be the first to say seems to be a ratshit piece of distorted TV news.

Jānis Dombrava, a parliament or Saeima deputy from the NA filed charges with the Latvian Security Police (the guys who arrest college economics instructors for commenting on the economy) against the Russian language TV channel First Baltic Channel.  The reason was an alleged distortion of events ahead of the March 16 commemoration event for the German-drafted Latvian Legion.

I arrived too late at this event to see what happened myself, but from other news reports and You Tube footage, representatives of the Latvian Anti-Fascist Committee and Europarliamentarian Tatyana Zhdanok arrived some time ahead of the planned Legion (formally, Waffen-SS) commemoration and laid a wreath by the Freedom Monument in memory of  the victims of Nazism. The wreath even had a ribbon with these words in Latvian on it.

Some time after the wreath was laid, persons apparently somehow sympathizing with the organizers of the Legionnaire event arrived and covered the anti-Fascist wreath with tulips, then placed a red-white-red emblem representing the Latvian flag and the shoulder flash of the Latvian Legion over the defaced wreath. This was, by any standard, an act of vandalism, since the base of the Freedom Monument is often the site for flower and wreath-layings and different floral arrangements have always peacefully co-existed. Zhdanok and Josif Koren of the Anti-Fascist Committee noticed the defacement of their wreath from nearby and approached to try to restore it and move the large insignia.

At this point a confrontation started with someone who acted as if he represented the organizers of the Legion commemoration.  He tried to prevent Zhdanok and Koren from taking away the insignia and restoring their wreath. He firmly but politely asked them to leave, as “the next event” was about to start. On one of the You Tube videos, there is a point in the confrontation at which a voice off-camera shouts “ Jews do not belong here!” Koren is Jewish and I believe Zhdanok is also of Jewish descent, so this was a provocative and insulting remark, but it was not uttered by the man with whom both were having an argument over the wreath.

In the First Baltic Channel news item (I do not understand Russian, but got the gist of it), the sound of the male voice saying “Jews do not belong here” was attributed to the man with whom Zhdanok and Koren were arguing. From what I have seen, he said nothing of the kind, although the remark seems to have come from one of a not insignificant number of wackos who had gathered for the Legion commemoration.

The Russian language TV spot  appears to have been, to put it mildly, a manipulation of the truth that should be exposed, denounced and perhaps reprimanded by the National Electronic Media Council. Some journalist organizations should also censure this kind of thing.

However, whatever distortion the First Baltic Channel may have made, it is no reason to run to Latvia’s “neo-KGB”, the Security Police, whose record on free speech and press freedom is spotty, to say the least. While the TV channel’s violation of journalistic ethics is reprehensible, it is a greater danger to journalistic freedom to use a repressive police agency as a tool of enforcing “good journalism”. Even if the blatant distortions by the First Baltic Channel is not the best test case, dragging them before the Security Police, even getting the Security Police involved in media content in any way will have a chilling effect on all media (perhaps, especially, the Russian-language media).

All of which leads me back to the nagging thought that just under the surface of the NA’s nationalist and democratic veneer, there may be an authoritarian streak that grabs for the biggest and most (unpredictably) dangerous stick around, to invoke repression rather than criticism and debate. And while on the subject of March 16, it reminds me of a very interesting man, an American academic from Lithuania that I met on the fringes of the March 16 event. He is Dovid Katz, whose main activity is the study of Baltic dialects of Yiddish, but who also aligns with the Anti-Fascist view that yes, fascism is really coming back to the Baltics because some old geezers gather along with some younger wackos and neo-Nazis. I honestly believe that these anti-Fascist guys have the volume, brightness and contrasted jacked up all the way on their picture of things. No, the Nazis are not really coming back in the Baltics or Eastern Europe. Yes, there are wackos around, as in the US (where Nazis marched in Skokie in the 1970s, all kinds of crackpot racist and anti-Semitic or perversely philo-Semitic Jesus is returning to the Temple in Jerusalem so glory to Israel sects about) and that is about it.

As far as I know, the NA didn’t condemn the defacement of the wreath laid by Zhdanok and Koren, which would have been the right thing to do. They at times traipse around issues of anti-Semitism (one of their members, who was criticized for this, even used the term “intelligent anti-Semitism”, whatever that means). This is the kind of stuff that feeds the paranoia about the Nazis coming back. Calling in the Security Police feeds my paranoia about a party in the government undermining media freedom.

Latvian security police end investigation of incitement to desecrate the flag

The Latvian Security Police (Drošības policija) have ended an investigation surrounding calls on the internet for persons to desecrate the Latvian flag. The case has been ended because no "victim" of any crime was found (surprise, surprise!). Had anyone been found guilty of the actual crime of flag desecration, the perpetrator could face a stiff fine and up to three years imprisonment.
The call to desecrate the flag was published on the internet last year and contained a statement that any any "radical" advocate of free expression (say, like the US First Amendment) can only agree with:

In our view, any person, citizen or non-citizen, has the absolute right to do with the flag as he or she pleases. At the same time, the state has no right to punish a person for defacing, burning, tearing, or tramping the flag, The state must guarantee the right of persons to freely express their views. If a person has reason to take such actions with the flag, then he shall not even be deterred from such an action, nver mind punished.


For my Latvian readers:

"Mūsu skatījumā, jebkuram cilvēkam - pilsonim vai nepilsonim - ir absolūtas tiesības rīkoties ar karogu pēc saviem ieskatiem. Savukārt valstij nav absolūti nekādu tiesību cilvēku sodīt par to, ka viņš karogu izķēmo, dedzina, plēš, mīda kājām. Valstij ir jāgarantē cilvēka tiesības brīvi paust savus uzskatus. Ja kāds cilvēks uzskata, ka viņam ir pamats tā rīkoties ar karogu, tad viņu nedrīkst pat atturēt no šādas rīcības, kur nu vēl sodīt.

I fully agree with this statement, although I would never burn a Latvian flag. To me it represents, or should represent, the freedom that allows anyone else to do just that (the same goes for the US flag).

I would qualify the right to burn or desecrate a flag by saying -- desecrate a flag that is your property and don't create a significant public nuisance (setting something other than the flag on fire). Ripping down flags or national symbols that belong to public authorities or private persons is vandalism and should be punished with no greater severity than the damaging or destruction of any other, non-symbolic public property, such as a no-parking sign.

As for the Security Police, maybe they should avoid the chilling effect of investigations of this kind. As for the Saeima, it should repeal the laws that forbid flag desecration or give it any special status above and beyond the laws applicable to vandalism and destruction of public property. 

Latvia gets another badge for banana republic repression

Well, Latvia got what it was “working” for – a drop of 20 places to 50^th place in the world in the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index. It was in “good” company, just three places behind the 47^th place United States, which has disgraced its own benchmark First Amendment press freedom protections by arresting journalists covering the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in several cities.

Latvia earned its sharp drop, according to Reporters Without Borders, for two incidents this year – a raid by anti-corruption police on the newspaper Neatkarīgā Rīta Avīze (NRA) and the detention, for 48 hours, of the editor of a website in Latvian which exposed what it claimed was suspcious e-mail correspondence between Riga mayor Nils Ušakovs and the Russian Embassy.

Unfortunately, I missed the NRA incident in this blog, or perhaps I thought that an investigation by the anti-corruption police (KNAB) was justified, since the newspaper is effectively controlled by Ventspils mayor, oligarch and accused money-laundered and economic criminal Aivars Lembergs. I may have been wrong.

In any event, if you scroll back through what I have posted during 2011, there is plenty of reason to consider the freedom of expression (not just the rights of journalists) to have been dragged down to the level of a black humor banana republic by several actions of the authorities. So this ranking is well deserved, though I am more worried about the decline of press freedom in the country where I grew up – the United States. I frequently refer to the clear language of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law...”. That, for me, sets the standard for freedom of the press and speech, and it is very disturbing that the US cannot live up to its own standards. What can one expect of Latvia.

Nonetheless, respecting the rights of journalists and the freedom of expression is a low cost enterprise. Just let them be. And it has been proven possible in a country with much the same historical experience and “post-Soviet” political culture as Latvia – it's neighbor to the north, Estonia, ranked number three in the press freedom index after Finland and Norway. Another lesson not learned by a country that seems to want a downward spiral into cheap-ass (no concentration camps, just petty and stupid repression) banana republic status.